


Teach You A Lesson

by shinobi93



Category: Henry IV - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinobi93/pseuds/shinobi93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebellion: the act of rebelling. There’s an art, a delicate art, in playing the rebel, and it starts early, the moment a person realises that they must break loose from their restraints. </p>
<p>Hal has found his followers, seemingly sold his soul for a good time, and the plan is on course. Until it isn't. Seems Hal may have messed with the wrong person, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teach You A Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a conversation I had with alichay, so co-credit her for the idea and for being an eternal bad influence.
> 
> The reference to canonical character death is, unsurprisingly, Henry. I don't think any other warnings apply, other than a level of alcohol drinking fairly in-character for the Eastcheap lot.
> 
> Title based upon these lovely lyrics: "Oh, I want to teach you a lesson in the worst kind of way / Still I’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday".

Rebellion: the act of rebelling. Act being the operative word. There’s an art, a delicate art, in playing the rebel, and it starts early, the moment a person realises that they must break loose from their restraints. For Hal, this is the moment aged seventeen when he sees his father screw everybody else out of the co-founded company, and then is told that he must follow in Henry’s footsteps. Already teetering on the edge of escape, loitering near the path leading to near destruction, he takes that definitive step. Do it differently. Don’t let them expect your approach.

He finishes school, fucking expensive of course, and skips out, spending the entire summer in a drunken haze and returning home once every week or so to leave a pile of unwashed clothes and eat a decent meal. It’s only the beginning.

Autumn beckons and Hal must commit. The transformation is completed: he creates a wardrobe solely made of skinny jeans and obscure t-shirts and runs away, if running away entails leaving a note promising to come back occasionally and snatching all the cash he can find around the house before he goes. Young, bright, and leaving a trail of sparks. He flashes his father’s name like cash to entice followers to his cause, disciples to the tone of ‘fuck you daddy’. 

They are all escaping. Hal smirks, because they do not understand him at all. His escape is temporary. The entire life is temporary, but he throws himself headfirst into it.

Jack Falstaff appears and says _Boy, I’ll tell you how to breathe the life of this city_ and Hal says yes because he’s nothing if not susceptible to such an offer. Hal learns the shades of 4am: the desperate and the drunken, the regret and the revelry. If the stories are not big enough, he makes them so. Word on the street: a businessman’s son gone wrong.

So wrong he has no idea who he’s meeting anymore. Stepping out of the shadows, a guy he’s seen around but never spoken to, no big deal in this scene that isn’t a scene. Jack looks worried, steps away; Hal thinks nothing of it. _Hal Lancaster, scourge of the town_ , he introduces himself with a grin. Dark hair, leather, eyeliner: they all yell rebellion, so Hal feels at home, feels nothing but a chill up his spine as the lips curl into a smirk. _Edward Poins_ , the figure says, _but call me Edward and I’ll cut you_. Hal laughs. It’s funny.

Then, Poins is there, knowing the best places to go, the worst ways to fuck up. Not that Hal doesn’t know himself by now, but it’s better with someone by your elbow, offering suggestions in a seductive whisper. The seduction continues, no longer just which clubs to go to, and Hal finds he does not mind. Fucking anybody who is willing and he likes, his old technique, slowly turns into one guy, again and again: dark alleys, run down toilets, a dank flat Hal does not think is Poins’ and, once, his father’s house, dragging the leather-clad, chain-smoking guy up the stairs with unconcealed lust. Is it useful to the act? Hal’s not sure. _Gotta live the life_. The boy must have his fun, his aching, fervent fun in the darkness.

Meanwhile, Henry’s company grows, fights off competitors with ease, and Hal learns this from scattered business pages on hungover mornings and comments from drunken city boys and girls studying economics seeing the wayward son in the flesh and telling him his own importance. Hal likes his own importance, the flashing image and the neon signs reminding everyone that he is prince of the fuck-ups, the lost causes and the losing themselves. The crown is nought but a sprinkle of glitter in the hair, sparkling as the lights hit in the right direction for a second or two.

The disciples squirm, leave, argue. They are not all comfortable in the rebellion, not for this long. Years have passed. Hal is playing the long game, lying in wait, waiting and lying. Jack stays, always offering another place to go, another drink to try: it’s as if he has nothing else at all. Others loiter, bring in fresh faces. Like a talisman, Poins is there, Poins is always there, and if everyone else flinches when the guy’s face moves to anger, Hal doesn’t notice.

Bank account magically never empty, Hal goes on ignoring his father’s calls and getting his name and face splashed across just enough places that he’s not forgotten. It’s a charmed life: all money, no fear, and the people he argues with seem to back away, like they recognise that he’s not what he appears.

_I need a new rumour_ , Hal mutters to Poins after a shared bottle of vodka and voila, the next day, there are rumours abound, only the finest and best. _They think I’m tame_ , he whines into the cracked mirror on the wall of the bar’s toilets, and next thing he knows, Poins has shoved him against the wall, skinny jean covered knee holding him in place, and is eyelinering Hal into oblivion with a look of glee almost manic upon his face. Almost terrifying.

The next morning Hal wakes up with a tattoo, a split lip and no clue whose bed he is sharing with Poins. Nobody else is around and the room looks expensive. The night must’ve gone well. Later, the papers claim he’s joined a gang. _Won’t daddy love that_ , he sings to Jack in the evening, when confronted about it. Everybody laughs. Such an easy role to fill.

_Watch out for Poins_. Jack speaks the heresy one night, a Poins-less occasion with a conspicuous gap, and Hal laughs, as he does with all warnings. Laughs and orders shots. Jealousy’s a mean emotion, he does not say. Hal prefers insults to platitudes. _Watch out for everyone_ , Hal says instead, _you’re all fucking out to get me_.

The flirt with destruction continues, as all good flirts with destruction do, until Hal has danced close to the edge and slipped back again and again. That invisible line that he could never recover from. He skips home, waves hi like it’s nothing and skips off again. His father looks ill; his family dazed by Hal’s sudden appearance. It’s only afterwards he remembers he was wearing Poins’ leather jacket. Body armour. Rebelling is merging far too much with his instinct. Can’t get lost in the role.

Last night on the job, as it turns out, things are falling apart. _Can’t keep doing this forever_ , Hal says to Poins, back in his leather jacket with dark circles round his eyes that Hal can’t tell are intentional or not, and Poins looks at him like the words themselves are a betrayal he never expected. Hal waves a hand, drags Poins from the moment by his lapels, but it is done. The whispered _you don’t know what I’ve done for you_ is brushed aside, as all must be brushed aside soon.

Time is fickle thing, and it leaves no chance for forgiveness.

Henry falls ill, properly now, so Hal packs up the business textbooks he’s been reading secretly for years and arrives minutes too early, forced into a final conversation he never wanted. _I’ll step up_. Henry nods, face grey, then slips from the world before his eldest son gets too rattled by being in his vicinity.

The rebelling outfits fall away like discarded wrappers. Jeans, t-shirts, tattered shoes and body glitter Hal has no recollection of owning, thrown into his old bedroom before he leaves home for an executive home where money is pumped into the air for survival. The past is gone now: it is an illusion, a bygone dream that Hal can still feel lingering on his skin.

Or so Hal thinks, rebranding himself into that long-worked-for dream, the powerhouse of business, the ruler. Nothing left but memories, black gaps, and that small tattoo on his shoulder he can’t quite bring himself to pay to remove just yet. _Harry is the youngest company director in the country right now_ , the articles read, spelling out his triumph.

And then the company starts to slide, money leaking out of some gap or another, and Hal can’t see what’s wrong. Whispers grow, turn to hisses. Not so miraculous after all. He claws at the accounts, sleepless nights of looking for the flaw, and then it hits him: maybe the flaw is his fault.

It starts as an inkling, the vaguest suggestion from a sleep-deprived mind, but after days and days of nothing, no swooping saviour or frenzied solution, Jack’s warning is looking a lot more pertinent. Still, Hal does nothing. He has become very adept at waiting, even now when the shareholders are baying for his blood and the business pages are verging on libel. This is not something to be wrong about.

Finally, before the entire company submerges after barely months under Hal’s control, he takes out the old phone he never threw away and calls Jack Falstaff. The conversation is short and not sweet, but it confirms Hal’s suspicions. A vital flaw in the plan, an unexpected snag, or however it could be spun to sound less like Hal fucked up, but it’s true. He made one massive fucking mistake. He underestimated Edward Poins.

Once Jack has shed the light nobody had ever wanted to, those who knew keeping quiet and those who didn’t living in blissful ignorance, Hal finds it relatively easy to slip a few notes to the right people and so find himself sitting in a dark bar he’s never entered before, waiting. It’s an injustice to be kept waiting by the person draining your company of all its assets, but Hal can do nothing else.

The guy enters dressed in a way that makes Hal’s mouth go dry, the very epitome of the dangerous little cunt who got under Hal’s skin: the eyeliner, the black jeans surely too tight to legally exist, the boots, and the fucking leather jacket. Poins grins, an evil mess of a smile, and sits on the bar itself, feet dangling down like a parody of helplessness.

_Nice to see you_ , he says with the curled lip, and what can Hal do in response, how can he fight this? _So glad you found out my secret. We can’t all be little goody goodies on the right side of the law like you, y’know._ Hal knows. Hal knows he messed around with a fucking crime boss, some upstart little guy who apparently has the power to screw over a multimillion pound company for a little bit of personal revenge.

_How did you do it?_ Pointless question. Hal expects the answer, at least, the sadistic _why would I tell you now? I’m not done_. Hal knows expectations, Hal knows Poins’ smiles that leave the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, and he knows that he played around with someone who will now not stop until he has truly nothing. A last ditch attempt. _Can’t I do something?_

_Apologise?_ asks Poins, mockery dancing on his tongue. How sincere that would be. Poins springs down from the bar, landing expertly on the soles of those big black boots, and steps up to Hal, running his tongue around his lips with a glint in his eye, the kind that comes before the kill. _Now_ , he whispers, centimetres from Hal’s face, _how would you like to see everything you have be taken from you? Every last penny?_

Hal gulps, finally out of plan. His whole life spanning before him did not include this: vindictive criminal ex, unknown to be criminal and vindictive at the time, threatening to fuck up everything he’s been preparing since he was eighteen years old. All Poins’ old offhand references to everything he’s done for Hal come flooding back like stabs to the gut: what did he really do? Poins steps away, the smirk tugging at his face, and Hal wonders how he ever didn’t notice how dangerous the guy could look. Selective blindness. The perfect accessory to rebellion. Said accessory, looking well and truly main event now, opens his mouth for a good old-fashioned parting line.

_You picked the wrong man to fuck with, Hal._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the idea was 'what if Poins was a criminal mastermind'. Apologies if it's too similar to other things I've written, I just really wanted some vindictive Poins taking the ending into his own hands.


End file.
